Oil Prices Rise After API Reports Staggering Crude Oil Draw

The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a staggeringly large draw of 11.19 million barrels of United States crude oil inventories for the week ending January 5, marking six large draws in as many weeks, according to the API data. Analysts, had expected a much smaller drawdown of 3.89 million barrels in crude oil.

Last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a large draw of 4.992 million barrels of crude oil, along with an increase in gasoline inventories of 1.87 million barrels.

This week, the API is reporting another build in gasoline inventories of 4.338 million barrels for the week ending January 5. Analysts had expected a smaller, 2.625-million-barrel build.

WTI and Brent soared to three-year highs on Tuesday before the data on the expectation that crude oil inventories would decline yet another week, along with EIA’s updated forecast for oil demand growth that shows an increase over previous figures of 100,000 bpd.